A Debt Paid
by The cursed child
Summary: Severus doesn't go to Dumbledore, he goes to James.


All Severus could think was 'no' on repeat as he curls up in his deceased father's chair. His arms are wrapped around his knees, his head resting on them as tears trail down his face. His breathing is labored and he gasps for air. Sobs wreck his body, the sound haunting in the empty house.

"The Potters," Voldemort had whispered.

He can't believe how stupid he's been. Severus knows divination, he was well aware of the danger the prophecy could pose for his master. He just should've figured out its meaning first before parroting it back to the Dark Lord like a good little Death Eater.

If he'd been bold enough to just tell Voldemort that the words were about the Longbottom boy, he could live the rest of his life in sheer ignorance of all the mistakes he's made in his life.

Now, he has two choices: convince himself that his only mistake in life was his friendship with Lily Evans, or that everything else he ever did was.

He wants to believe the second. Yes, he knows that Lucius Malfoy is hardly his friend, that the plans of the Half-Blood Dark Lord are stupid and hypocritical for both him and Severus. (He's done his research.) He's never liked killing and the raids are never enjoyable, but he's never been the hero.

He fits in with the Death Eaters in a way he never even did among his fellow Slytherins. They're mostly the same people, but not all of them. Some of them remember he is a Prince, remember Eileen from before she married a muggle and became a shell of who she used to be. They praise him for his skills with potions, fund his research and pay for his ingredients. He fills their stocks in exchange for books from their libraries; expensive and some of them one of a kind. They are amazed by his knowledge of the Dark Arts, which was more extensive than theirs by the time he entered Hogwarts.

For Lily, he tried too hard to hide the lesser parts of him. He's never said 'no' to her because he was dead afraid to lose her friendship. He kept a lot of his opinions to himself, and usually avoided most discussions with her unless it was about schoolwork.

He knows, has always known deep down, that she would've accepted him nonetheless if only he'd been more open when they first met, because that's just who Lily is. Logic, however, has never impacted his friendship with Lily whatsoever. When he's with her, it's all about his emotions, which he hardly knows how to deal with on a good day.

He's lost her. Severus has lived a few years without her by now, and he sees no way of getting her back. She's in the Order, he's a Death Eater. She is married to James and surrounded by the Marauders daily, which means the odds are against him by an exponential amount.

Sure, he can take them on four to one, managed to keep level with them for seven years' worth of Hogwarts, but that won't win him any favor either.

It's been so long since he last saw her that he shouldn't care. His life might not be perfect right now, but he is probably at the high-point of it so far, which says a lot about his childhood.

But that's not how it works, not when he will be the cause of whatever Voldemort will do to her to get to the Potter boy. And knowing Lily, she will do anything in her power to protect her baby.

So he has to protect her.

Severus gets up from the chair and sneers at his surroundings. He wishes he could burn the place to the ground, but he can't. The house is paid off, and without an actual paying job he has no income to buy one of his own.

He walks out, past the wards that even he can't apparate through, and stops. The young man looks down and notices that he is still in his Death Eater garb. The mask is somewhere on the floor in the living room of the shack of a house, but his robes are still distinctive enough that an Auror will have the grounds to arrest him if they spot him.

He shrugs. He doesn't feel like hiding who he is any longer. Let them see who he really is. Severus takes a deep breath and disappears.

Hogsmeade has changed again; two shops have been replaced since the third attack on the town which happened last month. There are no people out, not even the Hogshead is drawing any customers tonight. He remembers standing among his fellow dark wizards and igniting the fire, spreading the fear. Nobody had died, he made sure of that. Spilling the blood of the magical won't help either side.

He can see Hogwarts in the distance. On the outside it hasn't changed at all, but he knows that the students and staff inside can't say the same. Children are too scared to wander the hall at night, one was killed in his bed earlier in the year for being on Dumbledore's side. He'd been a Slytherin. Even in the sentient halls there is nobody free from an attack.

Severus shakes those thoughts from his head and fills them with an image of him and Lily on the swings, talking of their dreams for Hogwarts, their first year just two days away. "Expecto Patronum," he whispers quietly, more familiar with the spell than most people will ever guess.

His doe is glowing white and absolutely stunning. Her beauty is clear and defined, her head just reaching his chest. He allows himself a rare smile. His hand reaches for her, long fingers caressing her nose gently. She is as solid as he is, though how or why is something he's not been able to figure out.

Severus tries to find the words to tell her, searches his usually exceptional eloquence for a way to ask Dumbledore for what he wants. He could blackmail the man; his research on the headmaster has been as extensive as the hours he spend finding out about the Dark Lord.

But he knows how ruthless Dumbledore can be, and he is not a man to give into such demands. He will protect the Potters, Severus knows that, but he will have a price, and it will be steep.

It is not that he is unwilling to pay it, he just doesn't know if Dumbledore will be able to deliver his side of the promise. The Headmaster knows the full prophecy, and has done nothing to protect either the Potters or the Longbottoms.

Also, being the leader of the light, the old man shouldn't have a price for this type of information willingly offered. Not once during all of Severus' years at Hogwarts has any teacher taken his side in his war with Gryffindors and Slytherins alike. It never mattered who started it, Severus was always the one told to stop it. He wasn't allowed to defend or attack, even though the odds were against him everytime, because he's never had an ally.

The happiness that accompanied his memory fades, and his patronus fades with it. He can't do it. Dumbledore is not an option.

Severus is smart enough. He can come up with the same ideas. He knows exactly how to find somebody that doesn't want to be found, all he has to do is think in reverse.

The only time he couldn't find someone was when he found out that he needed their secret keeper to pass the Fidelus Charm. The possibilities had been endless, and he could hardly torture a dozen people into telling him the location of his target willingly.

Lily is the best witch the Charms department has seen in decades, she will know how to cast it. The only downside is that she will know everything he doesn't want her to. He remembers the doe, bright and ethereal, and snorts. He's fooling himself if he thinks that Lily, as smart as she is, hasn't figured out that he never gave up on her, even if she can't allow him the same curtsy.

Nevertheless, he can't see her, can't speak to her. After tonight, he will be back at the Dark Lord's side, and there he will stay.

He's kept an eye on his best friend even though they no longer interact in any way. Godric's Hollow is familiar, so is the house he watches from time to time. He's never said foot in it, and he won't do so today.

He touches the wards, doesn't temper with them, doesn't cast a spell, just connects with it long enough to trigger the alarm that will alert Potter. The Auror is connected to the wards, so he will be the one checking out the danger. With a little bit of luck, he won't take Lily with him. Until he is sure of that, Severus will stay disillusioned.

As predicted, James Potter comes out. Not through the front door as any normal human would, but exiting by using the window of what has to be the kitchen. Had this been a trap, it would actually have been a good strategy, Severus admits in the privacy of his own head.

The Auror is in uniform, either just back from work or about to start the night shift. His wand is out, a detection charm finding Severus' form easily, even if he can't see his enemy.

The Slytherin allows his illusion to fade, and Potter recognizes him immediately. You do not play cat and mouse with each other for seven years and not learn the way they stand, move, speak, hide and _hunt_.

"What are you doing here?" Potter asks from twenty feet away, the perfect distance for dodging spells. It's almost strange that the Gryffindor hasn't attacked yet. Just a few years back, he would've cursed Severus just because their eyes met across the courtyard. Now, he waits and listens, and the Death Eater reminds himself that he and Potter haven't fought since the beginning of their seventh year, pranks and retaliation excluded. Things have been different for a long time.

"Where is she?" Severus questions first, letting James come closer so he won't risk Lily overhearing from wherever she is. Potter frowns and considers if he should answer. The stupid thing is, he knows Snape's greatest weakness, and is sure that he would never hurt Lily Evans, even now she carries another last name.

"Lily's in the house with Harry. You won't get near her," he warns, knowing that the amount of reasons Snape could be at his home is very tiny and they all have to do with Lily.

"Good," Snape says, confusing James, "I've come to warn you. He is personally targeting you." Snape doesn't usually play the pronoun game, but there is no mistaking who he means this time. And speaking out loud, he always uses the 'Dark Lord' now that the Taboo is active, which is practically a verbal confirmation of everything Potter and the Aurors already suspect. At least the robes he's wearing because he wanted to spite Dumbledore can't be recognized from a distance in the darkness of the night.

"That's nothing new, we've defied him quite a few times." It's proof of how much James has changed that he says this without a shred of arrogance or pride. By the sound of it, Potter is getting tired of the war just like everyone else. The world is different without the walls of Hogwarts to shield them from what a real war is like.

Severus tries his hardest not to flinch at the wording, knowing that it might not be deliberate, but a stound reminder of his role is this mess.

"Wait. Personally?" James says after a moment of silence in which he tries to process the news.

"Yes, more specifically, he is targeting your son." Severus still hasn't drawn his wand, and sees Potter's lower in disbelieve.

"Why?" Potter laughs, and Snape can recognize the first symptoms of shock when he sees them. It's not that long ago that he experienced them himself.

"A prophecy that may or may not be about him and your son, predicting his downfall. Naturally, your prodigy came to mind when he learned of its contents."

"Divination never really seemed to be your thing, Snape. And how do you know all of this?" Despite the aggressive tone, Potter's wand doesn't go back up.

"You know why," is all Severus says. He closes his eyes and thinks the incantation. His wand lights up where it is stashed in his wrist holster, and his silhouette is illuminated. Potter spots his attire immediately. "I knew it," he whispered.

"Did you expect anything else?" Snape sneers, wry amusement in an undertone. If anything, he's always been good to living up to expectations. His teachers and peers had been so convinced he would go dark that they drove him to it in the end.

"Then why?" James asks, and the myriad of questions in those two words is loud and clear to Severus. He knows Potter better than he knows the people he more or less calls his friends.

"I owe you a life debt," he says to James, feeling the strength of it in the back of his mind ebbing as the conversation and his resolve further. His magic already knows where this is going, even when Severus doesn't.

"It doesn't matter. We don't stand a chance," James says harshly, glancing back to check the house where Lily is sitting in the nursery with Harry, waiting for his signal.

"Lily can hide you under the Fidelus Charm. He won't get to any of you as long as you remain within the wards." As long as _she_ does, they both think, because they're both aware that Severus is only doing this because of Lily, even if he won't say it out loud.

"It's a prophecy, Snape. One way or another, he will find Harry. Hiding won't change that. It will come true" Severus is impressed for a second that an idiot like Potter knows about the obscure form of magic, but keeps his comments to himself.

Then he feels his temper rising. "So you'll just give up and let the Dark Lord kill the boy, your son?" He doesn't even know the kid's name. "Prophecies are self-fulfilling, true, but they can mean so many things. It could be the Longbottom kid, it could be about another Dark Lord two centuries from now. Think, Potter!"

Potter looks like he needed the reprimand, his shoulders releasing some of the tension. When in shock, let others do your thinking. Knowing that there are other options means that there is hope, and everything else chimes in from that point onward.

"One of my friends will be secret keeper," James says, not realizing that giving Severus this information is stupid at best. If he felt like it, he could narrow the options down to three people. Then again, everybody who knows Potter even a little bit knows that he'll choose Black to keep his family safe.

"There is a traitor in the Order of the Phoenix," he reveals instead. Voldemort often talks of his spy, though not even Lucius and Bella seem to know who it is. Someone has to have recruited the traitor at some point. There is no way of knowing who. Although…Severus thinks again. Converting a member of the Order to the Death Eaters would definitely mean a promotion into the inner circle, and Regulus _is_ their newest member. The spy must've been close to the younger Black's year to get him to listen to a barely adult Junior Death Eater. Sirius never would, but the wolf might, or the coward. Both are good candidates.

"I trust my friends, they're not spies," Potter defends, and Severus envies that he never had anybody that loyal to him, even Lily stopped believing. James knows there is a traitor among the members of the Order, has his suspicions about who it could be. He doesn't share his thoughts.

"Dumbledore has to know who it is. Who else would he protect from prosecution? And why, if it were not one of his precious little cubs capable of redemption?" He can't quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. He has been a victim of the Headmaster's legillimency. He worked over four years on his occlumency to hide what he wanted to keep hidden. He has withstood an attack from the Dark Lord for the first time tonight, but doubts there are many others who know of mind magic, let alone have mastered it.

He doesn't let Potter reply. "No, it has to be you. You are the only one that will never give them up." Potter is the only one he can trust with Lily's safety. The only option.

But secret keepers have risks too. If James apparates home with a tag-along, he will involuntarily share the address, and get his family killed in the progress. It's why he would have to leave his house and wife and son behind until the Dark Lord is defeated.

James knows this too, and shakes his head. The war could last decades if there is no Chosen One to take Voldemort down. He can't leave his family and never look back. Lily won't let him.

"You wouldn't," James comments out of nowhere.

I already did, Severus thinks bitterly, not exactly sure where Potter is going with this.

"You owe me a life debt, and I'm calling it in. You will keep the secret, and be bound to do so in every way." By his loyalty to Lily, his own safety, the life debt, the simple vow in the Fidelus itself and his own intricate code of honor, that only his greatest enemy ever skimmed the surface of.

Severus takes a step away from his nemesis, but Potter grabs his wrist and pulls him back. He can't remember Potter getting closer, but he is, and now his life debt has been called upon in the least painful way possible, or so James would like him to think. Severus sees the dangers of the promise too good to be true. He can't do it, even if he has to, is forced to.

"I know you don't want to, and why you don't want to," he lets go of Severus' wrist, and holds out his hand to shake. "But just because you cannot come into the house, doesn't mean she can't come out. I'm not trying to ban you from Lily's life, Snape. This might even be the way to finally resolve what happened between the two of you."

Snape takes a deep breath, not daring to hope.

They shake hands for the first time.


End file.
